Basically do not buy, they are junk and Samsung support is horrendous.



Having been fascinated with these American style fridge freezers with ice making units for years, I decided to splurge on a Samsung unit about 2.5 years ago. It cost around 3k but then fridge freezers are long term investments, right??

To cut a long story short it started malfunctioning a week ago, completely switches off and stays off for about an hour, before reanimating. So basically this continuous cycle of one hour dead and one hour alive, which means the freezer is unusable.

Its 6 months out of warranty and Samsung do not want to know. OK fair enough, but their sole Swiss service partner has been next to useless. They are based outside of Zurich and charged us CHF 180 to come and basically plug and unplug it telling us that a hard reset might cure the issue. It didn't so they then said they could try replacing various circuit boards and seeing if that fixes the problem, again at a cost of CHF 180 a pop. And if that doesn't fix the problem the engineer suggested that we just bin it since the problem could be with a non replaceable part

I am prepared to pay to get this thing repaired, but not throw upwards of Chf 360 and still find that the fridge needs to be binned. Its a 120 kg behemoth, so its not like getting rid of a toaster.

Anyway I have escalated my complaint up the Samsung CS chain, but they are studiously avoiding me.

Very pissed off, but good to rant

Came across this thread by accident, and have to concur - we inherited a Samsung American style unit; and wouldn't buy another one on the basis of their lack of service support. A couple of the decorative parts were already broken when it came into our care, and under our ownership we've had an issue with the ice maker plus an internal light breakage (not a bulb, but an integrated fuse issue, which means that to see inside the fridge at night, I have to open the freezer door and rely on that light shining into the fridge!). I've made various attempts in the last 2 years to secure replacement parts from within CH (where the unit was originally bought) or from the UK or France or Germany - from both Samsung agents and the generic spare parts companies. No success - keep being told that the parts aren't available. Samsung HQ in South Korea have shown no interest in helping. Such a shame - it is a lovely looking piece of kit and runs well otherwise, but when it does wind up going bang, I'll not bring another Samsung into this house!

As a workaround, maybe you can install a timer which 'reboots' it every 15 minutes.

Many appliances these days are built to last 5 years with an auto self destruct built in, that's why they are cheap in the first place.

If they use quality components the price is always higher. Saying this 3k chf aint cheap for a fridge.

The components they use in the appliances are cheap they know they will fail and they also know you'll be back buying a new unit.

I was specifically thinking about washing machines.

Gone are the days of generic repair shops. Very few people will attempt to repair they will just buy new.

Such a waste I have to add.

there isn't a lot inside a fridge that can go wrong, I'm sure other people have had the same issue so have you googled it?

Samsung are a terrible terrible company, totally uninterested in anything but there current line, be it tv's, phones or fridges there tv power supply debacle being a prime example.

Anyway check forums then ebay for the replacement main board, if its anything like there tv's it will be something silly like a cheap nasty capacitor failing, 5p part and a soldering iron, job done.

Well, without a model number it is hard to help, but seems like some models have a problem and can be fixed:

http://www.maxperience.com/en/samsun...-switching-off

well that seems simple enough, shame the repair guy didn't seem to know his stuff. Worst case I'll take the fridge off your hands

when buying stuff, it is sometimes worth checking the service manual before hand to see how repairable it is.

sometimes i buy stuff with known fixable faults as at least you know what you're dealing with and there's already a community out there to help.

Fust sells and services Samsung Foodcenters according to this:

https://www.fust.ch/de/p/kuechengera...d-8127968.html

Although the contact form doesn't say where their repair centers are, I would expect that there is a Fust repair center somewhere near Basel:

https://www.fust.ch/de/reparatur-ser...--1--1056.html

Castro - when you give up, get the replacement from here.

http://www.super-discount.ch/de/kueh...kuehlschraenke

We got a big US-style Seimens and it works a treat (5 yrs old)

After much back and forth by email, I've finally managed to get some form of resolution. Samsung Switzerland have agreed that as a goodwill gesture, if the various fixes being tried by the engineer don't work then they will pay for that lost labour and parts. However if he ends up finding and curing the problem then I assume the full cost.

So spoke with the engineer today and he is ordering parts worth CHF 400. If he manages to fix the issue then the total bill will be CH 180 (for his earlier visit) + CHF 400 parts + CHF 180 labour and travel i.e. CHF 760 total

This is definitely a good advert for taking out an extended warranty

might have been cheaper just to buy a new (non-samsung) fridge!

Or buy Miele.

It just seems like such a shame, for its size and cost it should be repairable and not simply disposable.

I've no experience with Samsung fridges, but just a random thought...have you tried contacting U.S. customer service for advice? Of course you're not there, but they don't need to know that. U.S. versions of customer service have a reputation of being over-the-top trying to help you in any way possible so it might be worth sending an email or something.

Not only that but Fust also carriers spare parts for their entire product range. (At least that was the case a couple of years ago)

I concur with the guy who said "Buy Miele".

Always hearing horror stories about Samsung home equipment.

Never hearing anything except good things about Miele.

I went for Miele, couldn't be happier.

Just to close the loop, the matter has now been settled.

Samsung paid for the attempted repair/replacement of the electronics but to no avail. Another engineer was sent and the fault was eventually tracked down to a faulty inverter compressor. Fortunately that is one of the only things covered by a 10 year warranty (so confident are Samsung in this tech ).



Anyway, in certain cases they would have the part replaced but in this instance they decided to cut their losses, scrap the fridge and give me a partial refund based on its age (about half its RRP).

Its better than a poke in the eye, so now I have gone ahead and bought its replacement, but this time with a 5 year extended warranty slapped on top.

The oven has been repaired twice and we're on our third rarely used steamer. The last repairman, came in shook his head and just said 'Uh. Miele, Miele, Miele'. The Electrolux stuff has been faultless.

Castro - This is a bit different than your problem, but we have a Samsung refrigerator/freezer that does not have an icemaker. The problem we have is the freezer (at the bottom) had a defrost problem that was causing the cooling cycle (of fridge and freezer) to turn itself off quite often, resulting in a worse problem.

I defrosted it myself a few times, using a hair dryer for about an hour. But it kept coming back. Eventually, I found that the ice had built up way back in the cooling system and I needed to let it thaw overnight for all of the ice to melt. Now that all of the "cooling passages" are unblocked, everything seems to work correctly again. The unit is at least 7 yrs old, so pretty happy with its durability now that I understand what the problem is/was.

Good luck with the new fridge!